Tunde wasn’t sure when it happened, when the pain stopped, when the fire that had flayed his soul finally dimmed.

  When the screaming, his own or someone else’s, finally fell silent.

  But it ended.

  And in its place came the flood, a rush of power so pure, so vast, it filled every fiber of his being in an instant.

  He should be dead, how many times had he told himself that?

  He should have died.

  By all logic, all cultivation law, all reason, he should have ceased to exist. Three paragons had tried to end him. One of them had reached into his very soul and attempted to unmake him. And yet, He lived.

  No, He didn’t just live.

  He endured.

  The mantra of the void still echoed through him, etched into the foundation of who he was.

  It had rung like a low drumbeat within his mind even as his soul was peeled, stripped, atomized and stitched back together. He remembered now, vividly, the pain of becoming a master.

  He had thought that was the final crucible. The great threshold.

  He realized now how wrong he had been.

  That had merely been the doorway.

  This, this was merely the descent into the depths of what he truly was becoming.

  His body had been burnt to ash, scoured clean by divine flames and devoured by the authority of a Regent’s chosen Paragon. The Keeper’s soulspace had sought to erase him.

  But the void fought back.

  And when it fought, it devoured.

  His understanding had deepened. Not just in theory, but in essence, the void did not simply consume. It embraced. It encompassed.

  It absorbed the meaning of all things and left only truth behind.

  It had no boundaries, only horizons, and now, he had tasted that.

  He could feel his body, still inside the Soulspace, reforming. Regenerating from the wreckage. Cells, bones, nerves. Rewritten by the power he’d devoured. By what he had become.

  The very walls of his soulspace extended far beyond their previous boundaries, now stretching miles in every direction, rich with power, alive with potential.

  He willed the process to move faster.

  The spiritual beast, his aura made manifest, roared in the distance, its voice shaking even the bedrock of his soulspace.

  It echoed through his being like a second heartbeat, resonating in time with his concept. He could feel his soul thriving, expanding, maturing.

  When his vision finally returned, he stood in an empty soulspace.

  But it no longer felt hollow; his authority and essence flame still burned high above, swirling like twin suns.

  Both pulsed in rhythm with the law he was coming to know, the law of the void. He could feel its rhythm, even if he couldn’t hear it fully. Not yet.

  But the mantra still rang clear within him.

  That would be enough.

  For now.

  Tunde stood there, drinking it in, the silence, the peace, the overwhelming clarity, and for a moment, he almost forgot the war that still raged outside.

  Then it hit him, a cascade of raw emotion.

  Grief.

  Terror.

  Fury.

  Zhu.

  The bond between them flared, and through it came a wave of anguish.

  Tunde saw flashes, moments from the battlefield he had left behind. The instant his physical form had nearly crumbled.

  The second his soul had been ripped away. The pain they all felt when he disappeared, like a piece of the rebellion had been torn from the sky.

  He hadn’t ascended in light. There had been no Heaven’s Crucible here.

  No lightning.

  No celestial music.

  No divine tribulation.

  Only silence and consumption.

  He hadn’t broken through; he had devoured his way forward.

  Three paragons—gone.

  Their essence repurposed, converted into the forge fire of something wholly new. And now that he was whole again, Heaven’s Crucible would come for his body, not his soul.

  He smiled.

  A slow, tired, feral smile.

  Then he turned his eyes upward.

  Above him loomed the inheritance, the Gate of Alana, silent and watching.

  Its golden runes blazed against the firmament of his soulspace, each one heavy, terrible, sacred.

  He counted six.

  Six laws.

  Each pulsing with a weight that strained his spirit just to look at them.

  He held their gaze for a second too long and had to look away.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  His time to understand them would come, but not now. He had a war to win. A world to reclaim.

  He exhaled slowly, steadying his mind.

  With a thought, the floating knives, still humming with void Ethra, returned to him, orbiting his body with effortless grace.

  Their edges gleamed, their presence felt like loyal wolves waiting for the command to hunt.

  And then Tunde stepped forward, willing himself back into the world.

  Back to the battlefield.

  Back to the storm.

  ******

  Ifa had nearly gone mad the moment Tunde vanished into Ugad’s soulspace.

  It wasn’t just the suddenness of it, the wrenching snap of a soul being torn away. It was the finality.

  He had felt it like a blade through his own chest. Worse still was the knowledge that two other paragons had followed in after him… and Ugad had immediately retreated behind enemy lines.

  It was like watching a coffin lid slam shut.

  In that instant, Ifa let go.

  He released everything he had restrained, centuries of patience, layers of subterfuge, every ounce of caution built across lifetimes.

  There was no need to hide anymore. No more shadows to dwell in.

  If Tunde, the one who carried the true hope of their legacy, was dead, then what did they have left to protect?

  His spirit detonated with golden power.

  A pillar of light burst from his body, and the battlefield shifted.

  The skies responded, flaring brighter against the backdrop of swirling darkness. The pressure alone forced paragons of the Talahan clan to turn and stare, eyes wide with the impossible truth.

  Ifa had ascended.

  He took the mantle he had once worn in the days when the world had still been young.

  When the Seekers had stood tall.

  Now, that mantle burned anew.

  Stone titans tore their way out of the ground at his command, manifested from his will alone, rising from the blackened earth and launching skyward.

  They moved with silent fury, slamming into the paragons overhead like judgment given form.

  A wave of green vines whipped into existence in response, coiling like serpents of living ironwood.

  The paragon of the Wild Wardens summoned her weapon, the Living Jungle, its canopy of death growing to blot out the sky.

  But Ifa was already moving, streaking toward her with hands aglow, a formation pulsed into life between his palms.

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  Heaven-Shattering Blow.

  A technique capable of collapsing a mountain range.

  He slammed it into the coiling vines as they lunged to bind him.

  The impact detonated the formation, a shockwave cracking the air like a divine explosion.

  The vines shrieked in protest, ripped apart by the sheer magnitude of force. The Warden paragon recoiled, her aura rattled.

  Meanwhile, Zhu was a nightmare unleashed.

  The divine beast fought like a memory of terror, his soul-rendering screeches fraying the spirits of enemy cultivators.

  Every time he cried out, formations faltered. Every sweep of his sickles drew blood and collapse, a glimpse of the Jade Tyrant he had once been in a past the world had tried to forget.

  With Tunde’s absence, something had snapped inside them.

  Daiki fought like an ancient storm reborn, his staff cracking skulls, his steps precise, merciless.

  The fury of their group surged as they pushed harder, crushing through the frontline, aiming straight for Ugad—still retreating, laughing like a man who believed victory was inevitable.

  Ifa stared at the battlefield and saw centuries of struggle unraveling.

  The one destined to revive the Abyssal Walkers, the key to reclaiming their stolen legacy, was gone… possibly dead, his body devoured inside the soul of a hated paragon.

  No.

  He would not allow that to stand.

  He would burn the world first.

  Ifa raised one hand to the sky.

  And began to gather everything.

  Every scrap of power. Every ancient technique. Every ounce of hatred and will he had stored away across lifetimes.

  He began channeling a technique he had sworn to use only once again, a forbidden art passed down by his long-dead teachers.

  It had killed regents before. It would do so again.

  He glowed with a radiance that dwarfed the sun. No—he was brighter than the sun, a star igniting in the middle of the battlefield, drawing the eyes of everyone.

  Even the paragons paused. Even the Saints held their breath. The darkness at the edge of the skies swirled, beaten back by the sheer will of what he was becoming.

  And then—

  He felt it.

  A presence. Sharp as a blade. Bitter as ash.

  Jaito.

  The name thundered in his chest like a war drum just as a streak of power raced toward him. Ash. Lightning. Smoke. Steel.

  Ifa turned and swung his blade.

  It clashed against an ornately forged black weapon, a blade that carried lightning and black fire in its core.

  Jaito Talahan, clan head, had entered the battlefield.

  And he had come in full force.

  Across the horizon, reinforcements surged.

  Phantoms.

  Veilwardens.

  Skyvessels punched through the clouds, blotting out what was left of the heavens.

  A massive ship appeared, its helm carved into the shape of a grinning skull. The pressure it gave off was suffocating. It warped the very air around it. Ifa felt it crackle in his bones.

  It took Tiet, the Zao Matriarch, and a cadre of Saints to barely contain the aura emanating from whatever stood aboard that ship.

  And then—

  The doors opened.

  An elderly man stepped out. Thin. Wiry. Quiet.

  Every step he took echoed with death and blade.

  Ifa recoiled. Everyone did.

  They all knew who he was—though few dared speak it aloud.

  And from above, a ripple surged from the floating island of the Arcanists.

  Jaito glanced back, eyes narrowing. A satisfied grin touched his lips.

  “They’re almost done,” he said, voice calm and cold.

  “This is your last chance. Surrender.”

  From a new rift stepped two more figures.

  Ifa’s breath caught in his throat.

  Varis and Rhaelar.

  The grandchildren of the clan patriarch.

  Both of them—

  Paragons.

  Ifa swallowed. Pain seared across his chest as the soul-oath he had sworn to Guyan tightened like a vice.

  The very idea of raising a hand against them shattered something in him. But there was no room for sentiment now.

  Tiet, hovering in the air, shook his head slowly.

  “Surrender is of no use to us now.”

  Jaito sighed, rolling his shoulders.

  The skies cracked in response, lightning dancing above him like a crown.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said softly, “since I’ve drawn blood in earnest. Perhaps it’s time I reminded the world… what I once was.”

  Ifa moved the moment the clan head twitched.

  There was no warning—just motion, a blur of gold and fury.

  His blade crossed the distance in a heartbeat, his body surging forward like a released storm.

  The Imbuement of the Crushing Mountain surged through his limbs, his muscles trembling under the force of the ancient technique.

  The essence flame that had long been held in check, a volatile storm caged for centuries, tore into existence with a scream of golden fire, wrapping around his form like a living shroud.

  His authority followed.

  It burst into life behind him in the shape of a colossal golden mountain, shimmering with scripts too old for most to read.

  It descended slowly, impossibly vast, casting a shadow over the entire battlefield.

  Below him, his dominion unfurled—a seething golden ground, roiling with force, rising upward like a tide of divine pressure.

  Those caught within it, anyone who was not an ally, and anyone not of paragon rank—shook violently.

  The ground beneath them buckled. Bones cracked. Souls trembled.

  Crushed under the weight of presence alone.

  Ifa reached the clan head in a blink, their blades colliding in an explosion of force that tore reality apart.

  Their clash echoed across the skies, the air splitting and knitting back together like strained silk. Each impact bent space itself, ripping the very laws of physics at the seams.

  They spun around one another like twin stars locked in a gravitational duel, streaking across the heavens as comets of divine intent.

  They were careful not to brush the edges of the black mist of death, that cursed, lingering fog that had nearly devoured the capital whole.

  It had been pushed back only by the immense power of the Bahataba’s golden dome, a field of light straining to protect what remained.

  Elsewhere, on the battlefield—

  Shi Lian, Paragon of the Phantoms, barely moved.

  He raised one hand, flicked his wrist—and a dozen masters died in an instant.

  No fanfare. No technique. Just obliteration.

  Blood erupted in perfect arcs as the bodies hit the ground like puppets with their strings cut.

  Saints dove in to intercept, their weapons clashing with shadows as they deflected the invisible strikes, but some of them staggered mid-air, wounded without warning, bleeding from slashes that hadn’t been there a second ago.

  Darkness rolled in like a living tide, enveloping half the field in silence and stillness.

  Skyvessels opened fire on one another, their weapons screaming as golden, silver, and black formations lit the skies in violent storms. Cannons sang. Defensive scripts flared.

  Ethra beams carved across the air like dragons, vaporizing whatever they touched.

  But the light, the only true counter to the all-consuming dark, held fast.

  From above, Tiet stood at the heart of it, golden scripts flowing endlessly from his hands and body. He was a font of law, a wellspring of order amidst the chaos.

  With a single resonant gong, the heavens rang out, and the darkness peeled back in every direction, revealing the carnage hidden beneath it.

  Shi Lian frowned, eyes narrowing in irritation.

  That had been meant to kill.

  Through all this, the storms, the screams, the devastation, the Nulls still had not moved.

  They remained still, hovering silently above the battlefield, their dark robes untouched by flame or blood.

  Their presence was unnatural, so still it was wrong.

  They pulsed with absence, their power the absence of power. They burned not with Ethra, but with something far more terrible: nullity.

  And yet they made no move to strike.

  Not yet.

  Among them, Suyan turned her gaze away from the battle altogether, her eyes locking onto the distant palace.

  Her posture was unreadable.

  As if waiting for something.

  A command.

  A signal.

  Or a change that would redefine everything.

  She said nothing.

  But the way the air seemed to hold its breath around her told the story.

  Something was coming.

  *******

  When Jaito had left the capital, Mei had felt it.

  She’d felt it in her bones, the shift in pressure, the withdrawal of his domineering aura.

  She knew he’d taken the phantoms and wardens with him, the bulk of the Talahan clan’s enforcers.

  She exhaled, slow and steady, flexing her shoulders as bones cracked audibly in relief. It was the first breath she’d taken freely in what felt like hours.

  That moment of calm lasted only a second before two clan masters appeared at her side, blades already at her throat.

  Of course.

  Jaito had taken no risks. Not even with her.

  The masters were new, young, judging by the feel of their unstable auras. They hesitated slightly as they pressed the cold metal to her skin.

  She almost smiled.

  Young, uncertain, brash.

  Perhaps she should give them a chance.

  Her voice was quiet. Soft. The kind of voice a storm might wear before it breaks.

  “It would be in your best interest to remove the blade from my throat,” Mei said, spitting phlegm laced with blood to the side.

  They sneered, full of defiance. They didn’t recognize the weight behind her words. Didn’t understand what they were standing in front of.

  That was the problem with the younger generation of the Talahan clan: entitlement. They thought the world bowed because they existed.

  They didn’t earn their fear.

  Mei sighed.

  Another day, she might have crippled them, left them to ruminate on their arrogance. But the clan had grown fat and complacent. It was time to prune the rot.

  She gave a subtle nod.

  A flash of silver split the air.

  The blades that had threatened her fell to the ground—along with the heads of the masters holding them. They hadn’t even realized they were dead.

  Standing behind them was Vayne.

  Second to Suyan. Warden. Null.

  Silent as ever, as deadly as myth. He moved with the stillness of a void made flesh.

  Without a word, he shattered the chains binding Mei with a flick of his wrist. The moment the Ethra restraints broke, a rush of power flooded her body.

  Her wounds closed instantly.

  She blurred to Shen’s side, and with a single strike, shattered the bindings that held him crucified on the obsidian pillar. He dropped, gasping, and she was there, already placing a pill between his lips.

  The Insight Pill.

  Its power began to unfurl inside both of them like a roaring tide.

  They sat cross-legged, back to back, and let it consume them. Let it remake them. It was time.

  It was long past time.

  They would advance, here and now. They would become paragons. And they would burn the Talahan clan from the inside out.

  A voice interrupted the rising storm.

  “Jaito was a fool to leave you both with infant masters.”

  Mei’s eyes snapped open.

  But her body froze.

  She couldn’t move. Not without disrupting the final threads of her advancement.

  One false step and the Insight Pill would devour her from within. Shen felt it too, his expression tensed in alarm as he turned his gaze.

  “Stay,” Thalor Vayne said, stepping forward calmly.

  From the shadows emerged a woman draped in robes that shimmered like liquid starlight. Each movement bled silence and menace.

  Yue.

  Saint of the Phantoms.

  Mei’s breath caught.

  “Have you thrown in your lot with these traitors, Vayne?” Yue asked coolly, her voice silk over steel.

  “What would Suyan think of you?”

  Vayne didn’t reply. He simply drew his blade.

  His aura bled outward like a slow-burning eclipse. His dominion spread, cold, silent, final. Yue smiled at the challenge.

  “I always wanted to fight a Warden,” she said.

  “But first… I can’t allow those two to advance.”

  From her shadow stepped a dozen masters of the Phantom Sect—silent, masked, lethal. And among them stood her student.

  Miria.

  The girl whose mind had been shattered by her own failures now stood empty-eyed and death-ready.

  “It’s just you, Vayne,” Yue said with a smirk.

  “Let them die. Spare yourself.”

  Before he could reply, a low cough echoed through the chamber.

  A portion of the wall rumbled and then split open.

  A figure stepped through, brushing dust from his shoulder.

  “Actually,” he said with a crooked smile,

  “There’s three of us.”

  Yue turned sharply.

  Her eyes narrowed in disgust.

  “Jun Shadai.”

  The last heir of the Shadai clan stood before her, flanked by a dark-robed Null whose presence chilled the air.

  Jun gave a mock-bow, smirking.

  “Apologies for the delay, Elder Vayne. Blame your student here.” He jerked a thumb toward the Null, who bowed in silence.

  Yue blinked.

  Actual surprise flashed across her face.

  “You know what you’re admitting to?” she asked slowly, shadows creeping like ink across the floor.

  “You understand what this means? What you’ve condemned the Wardens to?”

  Jun shrugged.

  “A bit slow, aren’t you?”

  Yue’s frown deepened.

  Then Vayne raised a single hand skyward.

  A pulse of light shot into the sky, his aura shaped into the form of a clenched fist.

  And then the heavens answered.

  Skyvessels broke through the clouds.

  Wardens’ vessels.

  Dozens of them.

  They descended with weapons hot, fire already cascading down toward the palace. Yue turned, her eyes widening in realization.

  The Wardens had turned.

  “Now she gets it,” Jun said, clapping his hands together. “Took her long enough.”

  Yue’s face twisted into a snarl.

  “You’re traitors,” she hissed. “And we exist to end traitors.”

  She raised her hand.

  The shadows moved.

  They attacked.

  And Jun’s laughter echoed across the ancient halls as the walls of Talahan began to bleed from within.